The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
There are a number of temporary shelters that can be transported and rapidly set up for a variety of uses. In general, these structures include an underlying supporting frame, which includes at least three and preferably four corner posts or legs. Commonly, the legs are in two parts arranged to telescope within one another so as to define a lower retracted position and an extended position for use. A side support brace structure is attached to each of the legs in an upper fixed position and at the lower position at a slider movably mounted on the leg. The slider moves with and on the leg to an extended position for erecting the canopy and use of the shelter. Typically, the side support structure conventionally is a scissors arrangement, which enables the legs and beam structure to be compressed for storage and in transport.
While current structures may work well for their intended purposes in many situations, they still encounter problems. Commonly, existing canopy support structures do not have lateral side supports that provide adequate stiffness to resist side forces such as wind. Thus, in heavy wind, they tend to move. Additionally, if the canopy support beams of conventional collapsible support structures are loaded, such as by roof loads or by hanging items thereon, the support beams either buckle downward, bow out, or are required to pivot out of the side lateral support structure, all of which are undesirable. The canopy support beams also provide a ceiling height to the structure and to the supported canopy. However, often loads placed on or near the center of such support beams can reduce the ceiling heights. Where prior art designs attempted to overcome one or more of these problems, those solutions resulted in additional cost and undesired complexity.